WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS. Starring: Charlie Plummer, Andy Garcia, Taylor Russell, AnnaSophja Robb, Walton Goggins, Molly Parker, and Beth Grant. Directed by Thor Freudenthal. Rated M (Mature themes and coarse language). 111 min.
This American drama is based on the novel of the same name written by award-winning novelist, Julia Walton, and published in 2017. It tells the story of a schizophrenic young boy, who is diagnosed with a severe mental illness half-way through his senior year at high school, and becomes involved with a highly intelligent girl, who inspires him. The unusual title reflects the nature of the hallucinations he experiences, which are symptoms of his mental illness.
Adam Petrizelli (Charlie Plummer) lives with a fractured family. His father has separated from his mother, Beth (Molly Parker), who has taken up with a new partner, Paul (Walton Goggins), who Adam doesn’t like. He hears voices and visual hallucinations occur, and they both torment him. A girl in some of his hallucinations, Rebecca (AnnaSophja Robb), regularly appears to give advice and help, and he responds positively to her, while others in his hallucinations urge differently.
Adam is expelled from school for an accident caused by a psychotic break, and he is diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia’. After receiving treatment for seeing and hearing people who aren’t there, he is transferred to a Catholic School. At the new school, Sister Catherine (Beth Grant) is the principal, and after subsequent incidents related to his symptoms, a stern Sister Catherine eventually stands by him, but more so Maya (Taylor Russell), a fiercely intelligent girl, who becomes romantically involved with him. He tries to hide his torment from Maya, but finds he cannot, and he survives being institutionalised at a mental hospital after he attempts suicide.
Positive things start happening. He receives help from a kind, sensitive and understanding Catholic priest (Andy Garcia) at his school. He becomes accepted by the culinary school he has always wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a Michelin-quality chef - when he is cooking, he says, ‘everything disappears’. He reconciles with Paul, who has a child by his mother, and he declares the strength of his attachment to Maya. Amid his journeys from psychosis to normality, and back again, Maya always resists being defined by other than her self, which is advice he knows he must follow. With Maya’s love and new-found family support, he finds reasons to hope.
This is an introspective film that places the viewer deep inside the experiences of a mentally ill adolescent. It is a coming-of-age film for a boy trying to escape from the mental torment of psychosis, which is destined to be permanent.
The hallucinatory nature of Adam’s disturbance is captured effectively by the film’s excellent special effects which impressively combine realistic scenes with the distorted ideation of dark, surrealistic fantasies. This is a psychologically involving story that injects sympathetic characters into the narrative to permit the movie to tell its story in a highly unusual way. Charlie Plummer acts Adam with outstanding naturalness and spontaneity, and Taylor Russell impressively acts the girl who is there to rescue him from disturbed thinking and behaviour. Director Thor Freudenthal cleverly structures the film’s imagery to creatively indicate the seriousness of Adam’s condition: Adam knows he won’t be cured, but he learns to know who, and what can help.
It is hard to draw a line between categorising this film as an unusual treatment of mental illness, or as a complex story about two people who develop a romantic relationship with each other, hoping things will be alright. The film’s ending affirms the latter, but the surreal images of unreal events – especially when Adam’s delusional symptoms take over – suggests the former. The mix works, however, and the film is a coming-of-age story that has genuine impact. Its market audience is late-teenage, but the film has strong adult appeal. The movie has been directed and acted to project humanity in a thought-provoking manner into a coming-of-age story, and Freudenthal incorporates sound clinical truths about mental illness into his film in a compelling and affecting way. This is a film that cleverly captures the challenges of deeply troubled adolescence.
Sony Pictures
Released 10 December
Peter W. Sheehan is an Associate of Jesuit Media